Discard Trope: No New Wars In The Future

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Created By: Entirity on February 3, 2013 Last Edited By: Entirity on February 3, 2013

Nuked

No New Wars In The Future

All Sci-fi seems to have had no wars since modern day unless they are directly relevant to the plot.

Name Space:Main

Page Type:Trope

In the future it seems that there have been no wars since modern day, unless they are directly involved with the plot. Characters hundreds of years in the future will still reference Hitler and World War II, but there seem to have been no wars in the time between now and whenever the setting is. This usually arises due to the fact that setting up the story for a whole war that isn't directly relevant to the plot would feel like being Trapped by Mountain Lions.

In Ender's game, the character's commonly make references to World War II and the first two formic wars that are intertwined with the plot.

Averted in the In Death series. The "Urban Wars" took place about twenty years before the events of the books, and they are often mentioned in passing.

Averted in Star Trek. They explicitly mention the Eugenics Wars of the '90s, World War III in the mid 21st century, the Romulan War of the late 22nd century, and so forth.

Um... do you have any other examples? If not even sure yours really fits. It's not really "no new wars" if they reference wars that happened. Also, just because they aren't mentioned doesn't mean there weren't any, they just weren't relevant.

Even if there are works with no wars mentioned, I don't think this is a trope, honestly. It seems like trying to make one out of No Hairdressers In The Future just because nobody mentioned getting their hair done.

This might be an applicable trope, but like Drac said, the mere nonmention of them makes them irrelevant. This might apply in a distant future where World War II are mentioned, but apparently no other significant wars happened.

As written, Ender's game would count since it says "no wars... unless they are directly involved with the plot" (the first Bug war affects the plot). But then I'm not sure if this is really worth being a trope, since it'd be along the lines of "no wars that are irrelevant to the plot". Seems tough for a work to mention wars that are completely unimportant given Conservation Of Detail. Just by mentioning them they're usually relevant to the plot.

Common in works set Twenty Minutes In The Future, since there hasn't been time to have any notable wars, but that's hardly worth noting. Other than that, averted in just about every SF work ever. :)

I'm going to go along with not-a-trope. Especially since I'm pretty sure that the Ender series mentions other human wars, even if they don't actually come up in the first book (and why would they, since the war with the buggers is the only interstellar war humanity has ever fought?).

eta: there is that trope (I forget the name right now) that says whenever some category of thing is mentioned in SF, you always have to have three examples, two real and one futurist/imaginary. Like, "the greatest physicists of all times were Einstein, Hawking and Gkk-wrr-click." That might cover any real examples you actually happen to find, if you do.

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